Blogowitz #1

Our blog finally has a name. We can all sleep at night now.

by Jewlarious.com Staff

So let's start off by wishing a hearty yashar koach< ("straight and strong" – doesn't quite translate well into English) to all those who participated in our name the blog contest. And as you can see, the winner was "Blogowitz". A close second runner up was Bloga Nagila which was actually preferred by our Supreme Leader, but the Jewlarious reformist candidate prevailed upon the Supreme Leader to institute open and honest elections. So Blogowitz it is. It also helps that we went to elementary school with a kid named Stanley Blogowitz and he was both funny and informative, just as we hope this blog will be. Now to the blogging...

We went to school with a kid named Stanley Blogowitz who was both funny and informative.

Starting with bad news, there was a robbery in a shul in Bazu. For those of you who don't know your Jewish Geography, that's in Azerbaijan. For those of you who don't know your world geography, it's between Russian, Georgia, Armenia and Iran – a big tourist destination. Anyway, apparently two charity boxes were taken from the synagogue. But there's hope. Local police have detained someone who was previously convicted for the same crime: Sergei Binyaminov. In his defence, Sergei said that he was not stealing the funds at all. He was actually trying to do the Jews a favour. He invested the money with a friend of a friend who guaranteed fantastic returns, even by Azirbijanian standards. Ya you guess it. His name – Bernie Madoff.

Sticking with the Crook-of-the-Century, Bernard ("The Fraudster") Madoff is headed to the slammer for the next 150 years or the rest of his life, whichever comes first. This really bad boychik's breathtaking swindles have even given Ponzi schemes a bad name. We wonder if Madoff will follow the well-worn path of other chiseling criminals and find religion in the cooler. After all, religion will be a heckuva lot easier to find than a Lord & Taylor or a Rolex store. As a first step, Madoff should begin studying business ethics on Aish.com. Then perhaps he could get time off for good behavior, and be released when he is 195 years old.

A strange story: apparently Tel Aviv is missing 324,000 parking spots. Where did they go exactly? Perhaps the Israeli government should place a picture of them on the back of a milk carton? Or maybe Palestinian militants have kidnapped them? In fact, one terrorism expert Jewlarious spoke with said that kidnapping parking spots was a natural evolution of the terrorist attacks on Israel: "Soldiers are moving and have guns and tanks and they shoot back. Parking spots are just sitting there, and though hard to find, rarely put up a fight."

But now a feel good Israeli item. Israeli architect Eyal Amitzur has invented a more sophisticated form of the popular game Sudoku, called Tredoku. The 3-D game is already syndicated in newspapers around the world, and has its own Facebook group of more than 4,500 fans. Amitzur, 33, got bored with Sodoku's flat game design, so, applying his Yiddishe kop, adapted the game to have an infinite number of possible 3-D shapes. We at Jewlarious have not yet mastered Sodoku, let alone Tredoku, but when we get to brag about Jewish accomplishments, we do. Our mothers force us.

The North Korean ship Kang Nam, which was headed toward Hawaii and was feared by many normal nations of harboring long-range missiles, has done a switcheroo and is now headed back toward China. Those hot-headed North Koreans had said anyone who tried to intercept the ship was risking a declaration of war. Yikes! North Korean leaders could not be reached for comment, as they were all at a Ray-Ban sunglasses trade show, but one guy on the ship revealed that the captain simply got lost and refused to ask for directions. Seems that this personality quirk is shared by men of both democratic and despotic nations.

Finally, in Iran, the family of a man killed in a demonstration against the country's contested presidential election has been ordered to pay the equivalent of $3,000 for the bullets that took his life. Let's deal with the non-tragic element of this story first: what are these bullets made out of? Gold? $3000?! Where are the Iranians buying their bullets exactly? Are they paying retail? The Russians, or the French or the Germans, or whoever is supplying those bullets must think the Iranian dictators are a bunch of schmednriks. Nu, so maybe they're right.

Now for the tragic element. If only there was something we could do to help. Wear green? I guess what you are wearing doesn't help much when you are sitting at the computer. Typing green? Eating green beans? Other suggestions?

I've been striving to get more into spirituality. But it seems that every time I make some progress, I find myself slipping right back to where I started. I'm getting discouraged and feel like a failure. Can you help?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

Spiritual slumps are a natural part of spiritual growth. There is a cycle that people go through when at times they feel closer to God and at times more distant. In the words of the Kabbalists, it is "two steps forward and one step back." So although you feel you are slipping, know that this is a natural process. The main thing is to look at your overall progress (over months or years) and be able to see how far you've come!

This is actually God's ingenious way of motivating us further. The sages compare this to teaching a baby how to walk. When the parent is holding on, the baby shrieks with delight and is under the illusion that he knows how to walk. Yet suddenly, when the parent lets go, the child panics, wobbles and may even fall.

At such times when we feel spiritually "down," that is often because God is letting go, giving us the great gift of independence. In some ways, these are the times when we can actually grow the most. For if we can move ourselves just a little bit forward, we truly acquire a level of sanctity that is ours forever.

Here is a practical tool to help pull you out of the doldrums. The Sefer HaChinuch speaks about a great principle in spiritual growth: "The external awakens the internal." This means that although we may not experience immediate feelings of closeness to God, eventually, by continuing to conduct ourselves in such a manner, this physical behavior will have an impact on our spiritual selves and will help us succeed. (A similar idea is discussed by psychologists who say: "Smile and you will feel happy.")

That is the power of Torah commandments. Even if we may not feel like giving charity or praying at this particular moment, by having a "mitzvah" obligation to do so, we are in a framework to become inspired. At that point we can infuse that act of charity or prayer with all the meaning and lift it can provide. But if we'd wait until being inspired, we might be waiting a very long time.

May the Almighty bless you with the clarity to see your progress, and may you do so with joy.

In 1940, a boatload 1,600 Jewish immigrants fleeing Hitler's ovens was denied entry into the port of Haifa; the British deported them to the island of Mauritius. At the time, the British had acceded to Arab demands and restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. The urgent plight of European Jewry generated an "illegal" immigration movement, but the British were vigilant in denying entry. Some ships, such as the Struma, sunk and their hundreds of passengers killed.

If you seize too much, you are left with nothing. If you take less, you may retain it (Rosh Hashanah 4b).

Sometimes our appetites are insatiable; more accurately, we act as though they were insatiable. The Midrash states that a person may never be satisfied. "If he has one hundred, he wants two hundred. If he gets two hundred, he wants four hundred" (Koheles Rabbah 1:34). How often have we seen people whose insatiable desire for material wealth resulted in their losing everything, much like the gambler whose constant urge to win results in total loss.

People's bodies are finite, and their actual needs are limited. The endless pursuit for more wealth than they can use is nothing more than an elusive belief that they can live forever (Psalms 49:10).

The one part of us which is indeed infinite is our neshamah (soul), which, being of Divine origin, can crave and achieve infinity and eternity, and such craving is characteristic of spiritual growth.

How strange that we tend to give the body much more than it can possibly handle, and the neshamah so much less than it needs!